It's Friday. There's a heatwave. I'm feeling lazy. I'm just going to post some tweets.

Quick thinking having a tablecloth handy. I didn’t even notice the twitching from that dead robot.

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— Rav (@rvbdrm.com) July 21, 2026 at 8:38 PM

Pete Hegseth: "We need our warriors to embrace the Spartan mindset" U.S. Military: *suffers crushing defeat to the Persians*

— Gingerspiced (@gingerspiced.bsky.social) July 18, 2026 at 10:13 AM

Both events, it must be stressed, are a direct result of exactly the kind of stupid-and-cruel warfighting that Pete Hegseth promised to bring to the US military and has delivered. Our army will become, by inches, more and more like the Russian one: cruel, incompetent, impotent, incapable, wicked.

— "Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux (@bretdevereaux.bsky.social) July 18, 2026 at 11:26 AM

Yeah, so also, VLCCs ('very large crude carriers') that do the lion's share of global oil shipping are substantially larger than Suezmax, so if the Bab al-Mandab (the strait as the southern end of the Red Sea) is closed, you can't get those VLCCs to Yanbu. 😬

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— "Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux (@bretdevereaux.bsky.social) July 20, 2026 at 7:09 AM

Four months ago:

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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) July 22, 2026 at 3:18 PM

Is it me or does this description of “the status quo for decades” bear zero resemblance with reality? www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/u...

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— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner.bsky.social) July 20, 2026 at 12:39 PM

“.. At the start of July, prediction markets thought that traffic would probably return to normal by the end of the month. Now that chance is seen — surely correctly — as close to zero. Not only is the situation bad, but it’s deteriorating.” @opinion.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) July 22, 2026 at 6:02 PM

Small World. Lots of bad people.

👀 El Salvador's AI Agency has named Ginger Luckey Gaetz (Matt Gaetz's wife, Palmer Luckey's sister) as Strategic Advisor. Palmer’s firm Anduril is backed by Peter Thiel & partners w/ Palantir. El Salvador recently joined the Thiel-ally-led “Pax Silica” global initiative. They are moving fast...1/

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— Jenny Cohn (@jennycohn.bsky.social) July 21, 2026 at 11:30 AM

 

I checked. Not a parody account. 

The Odyssey is pulling $260 million this weekend, well on its way to becoming the biggest movie of the year. It has a 95%/97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Everyone loves it. Please enjoy this exchange.

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— Brandon Friedman (@brandonfriedman.bsky.social) July 19, 2026 at 8:53 AM

Presumably including a historically accurate cyclops

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— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) July 21, 2026 at 8:07 PM

Matt Walsh complains that Nolan brought his obsession with nonlinear story telling to the Odyssey, undercutting the original's narrative. The defenders of western civilisation, folks.

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— lastpositivist.bsky.social (@lastpositivist.bsky.social) July 21, 2026 at 10:09 PM

the odyssey discourse is a beautiful perfect window into right wing culture war psychosis. they went from hysterial racist mania over a character that’s on screen for 5 minutes to claiming there’s a massive conspiracy to fake ticket sales. this is just what they do for everything now. they’re insane

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— Sal Gentile (@salgentile.bsky.social) July 21, 2026 at 7:19 AM

ah yes, air taxis and supersonic jets, two vital and primed-for-success ideas that are just being held back by reckless bureaucrats

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— e.w. niedermeyer (@niedermeyer.online) July 21, 2026 at 6:42 AM

this comparison leaves out a key point: the Edsel sold roughly twice the Cybertruck's volume at a time when the overall car market was just 6m units/year instead of the current 16m units/year that makes the Cybertruck the much, much bigger flop, hands down

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— e.w. niedermeyer (@niedermeyer.online) July 22, 2026 at 6:28 AM

another key difference: by the time the Edsel came out Ford was not worth more than the rest of the auto industry combined, so in terms of market mispricing relative to performance Tesla and the Cybertruck are also in an entirely different league

— e.w. niedermeyer (@niedermeyer.online) July 22, 2026 at 6:35 AM

Happy fraudiversary!

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— Montana Skeptic (@montanaskeptic.bsky.social) July 21, 2026 at 6:23 AM